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moments I stood in shock, cradling in my hands the ornate hilt that was all that remained of the priceless magic sword
Dracheslayer.
The shock lasted until the darkness was obliterated by a gout of flame to my right. It provided enough light to show that I now faced a vertical wall of dragon-scale and muscle.
    I did the sane thing and ran off in the opposite direction. My retreat lasted all of three steps before a scaled hand with foot-long talons scooped me up to hold me ten feet off the cavern floor in front of an annoyed lizard. Steam curled from its nostrils as it stared at me with slitted golden eyes, and I braced myself for the inevitable.
    For a few moments I wondered what was preferable, being burned alive, or being chomped in half. By the time I realized my vote was for chomping, I also realized that neither was happening.
    The light hadn’t faded, and I realized that the dragon hadn’t aimed its breath at me, but at a no-longer dormant campfire in the center of the chamber. The dragon held me up next to the fire, as if using the light to examine me.
    Above me, I heard the princess shout down at me, “What kind of rescue is this?”
    The kind your father can afford.
I sighed, shook my head, and muttered to myself, “That could have gone better.”
    The dragon spoke in a voice that made my chest ache, “In fact, your attack was rather pathetic.”
    Great, they were both heckling me. I shook the remains of
Dracheslayer
. “I was cheated on this sword.”
    “That’s the least of it. You have no form, a weak swing, and you left yourself wide open for any counterattack. Are you sure you’re a knight?”
    “I . . .”
    I trailed off because the dragon had turned its massive head away from me, not waiting for an answer. It looked deeper into the cavern and called out, “Is this a joke, Elhared?”
    Both Lucille and I had the simultaneous reaction,
“What?!”
    Emerging from the deeper shadows in the cave, Elhared the Unwise strode out, carrying a large book wrapped in tooled leather of unfortunate origin; the kind of evil tome of wizardry that makes the death rolls of the Dark Lord Nâtlac look like a compilation of love poetry.
    He looked up at the dragon and said, “I chose the thieving sot for his looks, not his fighting prowess. Now don’t mess up his face.”

CHAPTER 4

    I don’t think I can adequately convey the rush of conflicting emotions I felt at that moment. The fear goes without saying, the kind of bladder-freezing fear I don’t think anyone can understand who hasn’t been restrained four feet away from something with both the inclination and the capability of eating you. Then we have the embarrassment at being so obviously conned, worse for someone like myself who often prides himself on being the one doing the conning.
    I blame the Mermaid’s Milk.
    Then there was the dull shock from the fact that in all the scenarios I had seen this particular bad idea get the best of me, I hadn’t seen it go awry in quite this way. And, I am ashamed to say, underneath everything else, I felt a small surge of self-congratulatory vanity as the wizard complimented my looks. Though I wondered what my appearance had to do with facing down a dragon.
    Elhared gestured to the dragon, and it moved to hold me before the wizard, who gave me an appraising look that would have been more appropriate on someone haggling over pumpkins with a street vendor.
    Above us, I heard Princess Lucille call down, “Elhared? You old coot, what are you doing here?”
    Elhared chuckled to himself as he opened the evil tome he carried. “I’m saving you from the dragon, my princess.” From where the dragon held me suspended I could see more of the pages than I cared to. The sight of the written language in that book had something of the same effect as looking very closely at a worm-infested wound on a none-too fresh corpse. It didn’t help that Elhared had marked his place in the tome with a pixie that had been flattened and